Google officially announces Android O to Developers

Just after the arrival of the second beta version of Android 7.1.2 Nougat, Google just announced its upcoming version of Android unsurprisingly named Android O. Of course, it’s not the final name.

Google hasn’t presented all the features that will be included with Android O. But, Hopefully, We’ll see more and more about the new version of Android in the weeks before the Google I/O 2017 [ 17 – 19 May 2017].

What’s available in this first preview of Android O?

Background limits

Biggest changes that have been seen is an effort to reduce power consumption. Android O Developer Preview limits how frequently background apps can retrieve the user’s current location, regardless of your app’s target SDK version. This will help your smartphone save more battery life than ever before.

Notifications in Android O

Android O will be more visually appealing. The new version of android will see user-customisable notification channels whereby alerts are grouped by type. Users will be able to adjust the background colors of notifications, and the messaging style

The best feature about notification is the ability of the user to be able to snooze notifications, and developers have the option to set time limits for notifications to time out.

Improved Autofill Framework

Android O will bring new Autofill APIs that will make setting up new apps and placing transactions easier. The autofill app will store and help your autofill secure user data, such as addresses, names, passwords, etc.

Picture-in-Picture mode [PIP Mode]

Android O is also bringing a new feature that was previously only available on Android TV devices Picture in Picture (PIP) mode. With this feature, one can continue to watch a video while navigating through other apps.

Connectivity Enhancements

Wi-Fi Aware will basically allow nearby devices to discover each other and communicate over Wi-Fi without an internet access point. Improvement will also be seen with Bluetooth which will help enhance audio quality.

Adaptive icons

Adaptive launcher icons are also new in Android O, which can display different shapes across different devices. For example, a launcher icon can be displayed in a circular shape on one device, and be displayed in a square shape on another. Each smartphone maker provides a mask, which the system then uses to render all icons with that shape. The new icons will also be used in shortcuts, the Settings app, sharing dialogs and in the overview screen.

Multi-Display support

Android O will be able to support multiple displays. This will allow a user to move an activity from one to another screen and more.

Copy Less

This feature of Android O will ease copying text from one app and paste it within another. This is done by giving suggestions in the second app as to what we might be about to type based on what we were doing in the previous app.

There are few other features that we are able to see in the Android O [Developer Preview]